Inspiration in Isolation
Works from Canceled and Postponed Exhibitions + Works made in Quarantine
November 4 – December 19, 2020
Pull Quote
"Telling stories is a part of human nature; it’s how we relate to one another."
Biography
A D A M M Y S O C K | | | biography
[lives & works - New Orleans, LA ::: b. 1983, Cincinnati, OH]
ADAM MYSOCK was born in Cincinnati, Ohio in 1983 - the son of an elementary school English teacher and a lab technician who specialized in the manufacturing of pigments. On account of a steady stream of folk tales from his mother and his father's vividly dyed work clothes, he developed an interest in narrative and representative painting from an early age. Mysock earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Painting and Art History in 2004 from Tulane University and an MFA from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale in 2007.
After his studies, Mysock taught at the university level for nearly a decade, including as a Professor of Practice at Tulane University. In 2016, he and his family moved back to Cincinnati, where he currently serves as coordinator for Manifest Drawing Center.
Mysock's work has been exhibited throughout the country and is in private collections across the US, including the 21c Museum, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Ruslan Yusupov, Thomas Coleman and Michael Wilkinson. He was introduced to Jonathan Ferrara Gallery as a jury winner in the 2009 No Dead Artists annual juried exhibition. In 2012, Mysock was awarded first prize “Best in Show” in the Ogden Museum’s inaugural Louisiana Contemporary Annual Juried Exhibition, exhibited for the first time at the Contemporary Arts Center in New Orleans, and concluded the year exhibiting at Pulse Miami Art Fair with Jonathan Ferrara Gallery. By 2013, his work was selected by curator Miranda Lash for inclusion in that year’s southern edition of New American Paintings, and was exhibited in a solo project booth at the VOLTA9 Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland (where he was acquired by the SØR Rusche Collection). In 2014, Mysock had a solo exhibition in the VOLTA NY Art Fair in New York. In 2016, Mysock’s work was featured in a Baroque and Contemporary group exhibition from the SØR Rusche Collection, Oelde/Berlin at Kunsthalle Jesuitenkirche as well as in a solo exhibition entitled When Everything Was Wonderful Tomorrow at Galerie Andreas Binder in Munich, Germany. His work was also featured in EXCHANGE, an international exhibition at Galerie Jochen Hempel, Berlin. Furthermore, Mysock was recently selected as one of two recipients of the fifth Manifest Artist Residency (MAR) Award through Manifest Creative Research Gallery upon his return to his hometown.
Artist Statement
I’m a revisionist history painter. Rather than rewrite the narrative of the past to justify an ideology, I repaint yesterday’s imagery in order to rationalize our present circumstances.
Telling stories is a part of human nature; it’s how we relate to one another. The stories we have in common help us create sincere connections to our neighbors and our surroundings. What’s more, storytelling – for better or worse – typically involves hyperbole. We tend to exaggerate; we tend to lie. Generally, we believe we control our narrative embellishments. What gets exaggerated from one telling to another gets exaggerated to challenge our listeners. What gets repeated gets repeated because it resonates with them. What gets omitted gets left out because it’s lost its meaning. We actively use embellishment to keep our audiences engaged. Given enough distance, however, sources and accuracy fade out and substitutions become the new norms. Quietly, time redefines what is truth and what is fiction.
As a painter, I’m preoccupied by the undeniable role that the image plays in creating this acceptance of the fictional. A painting has the authority to make the intangible concrete, and a series of them has the ability to authenticate a fabrication in our collective memory. When I begin a piece, I typically start with preexisting images, artifacts from this collective remembrance. I look for images that shape my pictorial consciousness, that are hard to question because when I first saw them they were presented as the truth. They have to capture my imagination and they have to feel largely descriptive of a greater story. From them, I’m given my task – I have to “disrepair” them. I have to consolidate an earlier world of historical and cultural visual-fact with an evolving understanding of subtlety and gradation. I find that the discrepancies I discover between the absolute and the nuanced inspire me most.
The resultant work is largely about storytelling, the ownership and authorship of our culture’s visual narratives, and the parallels between those tales. It’s meant to challenge the truth of “source” and the source of truth. After all, as Franz Kafka once wrote, "It is hard to tell the truth, for although there 'is' one, it is alive and constantly changes its face.
Curriculum Vitae
EDUCATION
2007 Master of Fine Arts. Studio Art – Painting.
School of Art and Design. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Carbondale, IL
2004 Bachelor of Fine Arts. Studio Art – Painting, Art History, Summa cum Laude.
Newcomb Art Department, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
SOLO EXHIBITIONS
2018 How Did We Get Here?, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA
Mythology of History, John P. Weatherhead Gallery, Fort Wayne, IN
2017 To Repeat, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
2016 What is Not Us, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2016 When Everything Was Wonderful Tomorrow, Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich, Germany
2014 The Jetsam, VOLTA NY Art Fair, New York, NY
2013 Backward, Inward, Outward, Forward, Volta9, Basel, Switzerland
2011 Wrong Sounding Stories, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2010 MythConception, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2009 Kith and Kin, The Reynolds Ryan Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2007 Scattered Mythologies, The ArtWorks Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
Commonplace, The Surplus Gallery, Carbondale, IL
2005 Experiments: August 16th to October 14th, The School for the Creative
and Performing Arts, Cincinnati, OH
2004 Recent Paintings, The Projects Gallery. Cincinnati, OH
SELECTED GROUP EXHIBITIONS
2021 Arte Laguna Prize 14, Arte Laguna - Arsenale of Venice, Venice, Italy
2020 87th Annual International Exhibition of Fine Art in Miniature, The Miniature Painters, Sculptors & Gravers
Society of Washington, D.C., North Bethesda, MD
Inspiration in Isolation: Works Made in Quarantine, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA
2019 Art Miami Art Fair, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Miami, FL
The Garden, The Schwitzer Gallery, Indianapolis, IN
artMRKT San Francisco Contemporary and Modern Art Fair, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, San Francisco, CA
Art on Paper Art Fair, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New York, NY
Horizon, Galerie Andreas Binder, Munich, Germany
2018 Art on Paper Art Fair, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New York, NY
2017 Art on Paper Art Fair, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New York, NY
Young Masters Art Prize, London Art Fair, London, UK
2016 Tapped, Manifest Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
Miami Project Art Fair, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Miami, FL
Theta Charity Antiques Show, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Houston, TX
Texas Contemporary Art Fair, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, Houston, TX
“A Building with A View”: Experiments in Anarchitecture, Contemporary Arts Center,
New Orleans, LA
Seattle Art Fair, Seattle, WA
EXCHANGE at Galerie Jochen Hempel in Berlin, Germany – Jonathan Ferrara Gallery
Young Masters, The Cynthia Corbett Gallery Summer Exhibition at the Royal Opera
Arcade Gallery, London, UK
Grosser Herbstrundgang – Leipzig, Spinnerei Galleries, Leipzig, Germany
Art Hysterical, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA
Art New York Art Fair, Galerie Andreas Binder, New York, NY
Bittersweet Times: Baroque and Presence in the SØR Rusche Collection Oelde/ Berlin,
Edwin Scharff Museum, Ulm, Germany
Mystery Sonatas, Marigny Opera House, New Orleans, LA
London Art Fair, The Cynthia Corbett Gallery, London, UK
'14-18 Guns in the Hands of Artists, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery, New Orleans, LA
AWARDS and HONORS
2020 Margaret Hicks Memorial Award for Best New Artist, The Miniature Painters, Sculptors &
Gravers Society of Washington, D.C, Washington D.C.
2016-17 Manifest Artist Residency Award, Cincinnati, OH
2012 Best of Show – “Louisiana Contemporary”, The Ogden Museum of Southern Art,
New Orleans, LA
Artist-in-Residency, Wildacres Residency Program, Little Switzerland, NC
2008 CityBeat Best of Cincinnati Award: Best Use of Public Funds: MuralWorks
**Accepted as Coordinator of the MuralWorks Program, CityBeat, Cincinnati, OH
2007 Artist-in-Residency, The School for the Creative and Performing Arts, Cincinnati, OH
'04-07 Graduate Assistantship, Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, IL
2004 Mary L. S. Neill Prize in the Visual Arts, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
2003 Alice Stirling Parkerson Memorial Award, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA
